Allow me to welcome you all to an all-new chapter session for the Toronto STC. I was very encouraged at our first meeting in September to see such an enthusiastic turnout. Our monthly program is very important to us, and I hope to continue to meet your expectations.

We have an excellent executive team assembled for the 2005-2006 session, with several new yet familiar faces, along with some seasoned pros that have continued to shine year after year. Overall, I feel a very healthy amount of enthusiasm going into my first year as your president.

There are a number of program areas that we want to look at this year including:

• developing new, self-sustaining services to attract and retain members, including developing new SIGs or local communities of interest
• securing new sources of funding through advertising, sponsorships, and special events
• strengthening our value to members by making certain services exclusive to members or pay-per-use for non-members
• developing other partnerships within our community to make us less financially dependent upon the society through cost-sharing and cooperation

Some specific initiatives include:

• conducting a membership survey
• launching a local membership directory
• reaching out to other chapters in our region to find ways to improve the effectiveness of service delivery
• promoting our sponsorship program to attract more community involvement
• initiating a public awareness campaign targeted at businesses employing technical communicators

Our specific goals include:

• increased member participation
• better member retention
• increased chapter income
• better web-based services
• one chapter award at the society level
• signing on two chapter sponsors

Additional goals include:

• increased the number of our members
• reduced expenses
• regular advertising
• one additional chapter award
• two additional chapter sponsors

I'll keep you abreast of our progress as we go forward, and will report on our success at the end of our session in June 2006. If you have ideas on how to improve our chapter or you simply want to help out from time to time, please drop me a line at president@stctoronto.org.

Rob Hanna begins his first year as the president of the Toronto STC chapter. His bio is available on the STC website.